A PASSERBY MIGHT have mistaken it for a wedding feast. In Metaxourgio, a formerly industrial neighbourhood of Athens, a crowd of boisterous Greeks had spilled onto the street and were squeezing around rows of long tables arranged end to end. The air was filled with the scent of lamb being roasted on an open grill. But rather than someone’s nuptials, this was in fact an exhibition opening at a progressive contemporary art gallery, the Breeder (thebreedersystem.com). Housed in a renovated ice cream factory, it was heralded by a sleek (and spotless) white façade. A vast iron portal opened to reveal a regal interior with organic curves.
On the ground floor, the artist Andreas Lolis showed me his striking sculptures. At first glance, they looked like blank canvases that had suffered delicate cuts, but they were actually crafted from that most traditional of Greek materials: marble. “I found inspiration from Henry Moore and Lucio Fontana,” Lolis explained, referring to the British and Argentine-Italian artists. “They both tested the boundaries of what can be achieved within their chosen forms.”
The Breeder is just one example of Athens’s revitalised culture scene, which is thriving despite a series of disasters that would have crushed the spirit of a less resilient city. The Greek capital is still recovering from the economic turmoil that began in 2008—a crisis that led to a series of financial bailouts from other EU member nations, which were accompanied by austerity measures that infuriated much of the populace. Those struggles were hardly eased by the global pandemic, but they had their benefits, the gallery’s associate director Alkistis Tsampouraki told me: “I worked for seven years in galleries in Mayfair. I came home two years ago, and I thought, Artists I knew in London, and even New Yorkers, had suddenly realised that studios could be rented
